[Chas Smith]

I too have used the Chroma Keyer to great effect however some animated lower-3rds have certain black levels that bleed out and create noise… I’ve adjusted the threshold,blur, etc to no avail… I know I can go through a multi-step process to fix-it (i.e. Color Balance / Mask Filter..etc.) but it seems that a simpler adjustment panel on a one-stop key filter fx would make a lot more sense. A key’s a key… why not combine everthing in one simple panel?

OKAY..so here’s my beef / rant: Seems like video edit software has been co-opted by grfx folks who like to play with levels (thanks to their Adobe Photoshop bkgrd)… back in the mid-1990’s I fussed with some of the developers of Premiere to look at how video editors work and use the same lingo like DELETE instead of CLEAR, etc. Anyways… we hear sooo much about work-flows, etc. and yet here’s this clumsy/multi-step method to do something which took me 10 seconds to do with a twist on a couple switches and check the scope. Like a lot of things in Vegas… seems clumsy.

Ok I’m done!

[Chas Smith]

Speaking of Luminance keying… is there a more straight-forward method / filter in Vegas? I know of the “masking” but that seems a tad cumbersome. Isn’t there some plug-in fx to just key out the blk or wht and adjust the luminance / gain like we did with switchers back in the day?

[Chas Smith]

UPDATE: Ok… so after I posted my original question. I went back in to my timeline and imported other downloads from the same batch. Here’s what I discovered: Some clips work just fine (select PROPERTIES>Alpha …etc. No problemo!

All I can figure is the clips I really want to use aren’t alpha’ed even though the website said they were. I’ve deleted the clips…re-imported them..did the select properties / alpha / etc. to no avail.

Guess someone didn’t do their job and just uploaded non-alpha clips for lower 3rd’s and well…the rest is history.

Hope they’re not the same folks who train Korean Airline Pilots.

[Chas Smith]

Incidentally, does anyone know if Sony makes a laptop that’s optimized for (Vegas) video editing? I had a VAIO (F650 I think) years ago that I bought hastily because of the Y2K bug worries. It handled video “OK” (standard def) and had a great little video program called “MovieShaker”… a random edit selection that strung together scenes from your HD to fit a pre-selected theme. It was great for quick promo bits to give clients a pre-vis of what-if’s.

You’d think Sony would have a laptop paired with Vegas that would smoke…. but I’ve yet to run across anyone who uses Vegas Laptops for pro-video work. I wish I could find the MovieShaker or something like it as it was waaay cool for what it was.

Chas

[Chas Smith]

Thanks to all who have posted so far, I appreciate your taking the time to explain everything. I wanted to toss something else into the mix which may sound blasphemous considering this is a Sony Vegas Pro forum…but I have to ask since someone brought it up.

Since I’m looking at a location-edit laptop for quick/same-day edits… would there be another choice of NLE software to consider?
Don’t get me wrong, I think Vegas is great but there are times it gets quirky and/or slows me down. I’ve had colleagues tell me I should just “get a Mac/Powerbook w/FCP” for location stuff. But I’d like to stay in the PC realm.

Any thoughts? I see some local news shooters use Avid or Edius on their rigs.

Thanks,

Chas

[Chas Smith]

Very Nice! 🙂

[Chas Smith]

That’s a good question but it appears that camcorders equipped with either HDMI, HD-SDI or USB 3.0 connectors (intended for display out only) may be able to get a better codec recording than their main format. I know some folks have done this with the Canon AH-X1 but I can’t vouch 100% for sure if it’s 4:2:2 Seems to be though from what I’ve heard in casual discussions on the subject.

TV Technology 2/15/13 had an article: Cheating a Camcorder’s Codec
https://www.tvtechnology.com/article/cheating-a-camcorder%E2%80%99s-codec/217820

[Chas Smith]

Thanks for the input John. I’ll look into the Vegas Pro Prodn Asst. as that sounds like it would be a timesaver.

I checked with the IT guy at the venue and they have several (paid) options for me to consider which is the way I want to go to make sure I have a rock-solid broadband connection. Now I just need to get a beefy laptop to handle the on-site edit. Anyone have any suggestions with an off-the-shelf laptop/specs, etc.?

[Chas Smith]

You’re most likely correct about them being a total loss / corrupted.
I had 5 other SD’s that I used on this trip and all others were fine.
Guess this SD just had a glitch somehow. I did a diagnostic scan on it and no errors or bad sections were reported so I’m stumped.

Chalk this up to sometimes things just go pffzzztt!! 🙁

Thanks for the reply.

[Chas Smith]

P.S. I downloaded the paid-version of the file recovery tool and was able to save files to HD but they won’t playback in WMP or anything else. Any ideas? I’m wondering if there’s an issue with the files getting corrupted somehow.